The Namesake
- Ashley
- Feb 1
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 2
Part IV
Warning: This part contains some triggers that might be upsetting to readers, including physical abuse, manipulation, verbal abuse, suicidal thoughts, drug use, and more.
Fore-note
I am writing this on Johnny’s behalf, using information that I obtained by being there, or directly from Johnny when we were kids/teenagers. I understand many people will be learning things about him that may be upsetting or shocking, but they are necessary for context and the storyline to his end. All of his memories might not be beautiful, but I ask you readers to still preserve Johnny as the beautiful, funny, smart young man that he was, and not what our abuser turned him to.
He deserved better.
Edited to add:
Johnny did get institutionalized for a week at Natchaug after his school incident.
He got kicked out for having sex with one of the female patients.
Yeah, typical Johnny.
Johnny's Experience, Part I
During the time that I was going through my struggles, Johnny was going through his own.
Johnny was 13 at the time. He was going to school, playing soccer, finding his place after moving from Florida. He made a lot of friends, boasted about all the attention from girls he got, and was a confident kid. He was sweet as could be, goofy, always the life of the party. Johnny was a master at the poker face. No one in his life outside of the house would have known what he was enduring at home.
Johnny challenged his father, and you could tell that wasn't something that J was used to. It absolutely enraged J to the point where he would breathe hard, his face would turn bright red, and he would stutter over his words. J would threaten and swear at Johnny. They got into arguments over anything. Johnny eventually ended up in the same situation as I was, locked away in his room except for meal times and chores.
J didn't only verbally abuse me. He also did it to Johnny and Austin, just in different ways. J frequently called Johnny useless, "a fucking retard", lazy, etc.. J would consistently comment on Austin's IQ/intelligence, referring to him as "Peanut", a handicapped piece of feces from South Park, or 81. Austin was 11/12 at that time. It all typically happened at the dinner table when the 5 of us were together.
Side note: J was very uneducated. He frequently asked me to write things for him because his penmanship was so poor, as well as how to spell words. I find it ironic that a 45 year old man who could hardly spell was commenting on an 11 year old's intelligence, but I digress.
The first time that J got physical with Johnny was at dinner one night. We were all at the table, eating our meal in silence as we normally would. Johnny brought up the fact that he needed new sneakers, that his had gotten a bit tight, and he wanted a different kind that were a bit more expensive. The argument got so heated that Johnny got up from the table and tried to go to his room to get away from the situation. It was then that J got up from his chair, grabbed Johnny by the throat, and slammed his head into the exposed wooden beam separating the kitchen and dining room, and started choking him until he was bright red.
Johnny didn't fight back. Johnny just stared his father in the eyes while he choked him.
My Mom pulled J off of Johnny and he went up to his room. Austin and I quickly and quietly got up from the table, cleaned off our plates, put them in the sink, and went to our rooms.
We all stayed in our rooms for the rest of the night.
This was the first of many close calls of physical altercation between J and Johnny. It was often that they would get in each others faces, or J would shove him.
Johnny and I continued getting closer. We were going through life changes at the same time and as much as we pissed each other off, hogging the bathroom or annoying each other, we kept each other alive. We knew what the other person felt. We often invited over our best friends at the same time, Friday nights, and we would all hang out as a group. We would sneak snacks and pillows and blankets into my room and the four of us would be goofing off 'til the sun almost came up, and then doing it again that night. Scott and Jordan, you were our rocks.
It had been about a year since my suicide attempt that the first instance of Johnny reaching out for help occurred. I was 15, Johnny was 14. He had just started at Norwich Tech.
My Mom and J had Auntie K over for dinner. It was a Saturday night. Johnny was upstairs in his room, Austin in his, and me in mine. My phone buzzed with a text from Johnny. I don't remember exactly what it said, but I went upstairs.
As I walked into his room, he was more somber than usual. He was sitting on the floor in his room, strumming away at his pearlescent white electric guitar. He had picked up the hobby a few months prior. I sat on the floor with him and watched.
I asked Johnny what was wrong, why he was so upset, what was going on. Without looking up at me, he simply replied, "I just don't want to be here anymore". I remember the flips in my stomach. I pushed further, "Like, living here? Do you miss Florida?".
Johnny looked up at me with a defeated look on his face, "No, like I don't want to live anymore. I don't see the point in living anymore. I want to kill myself". The feeling I had shattered me. Knowing that he was going through the same emotions I had been struggling with was comforting in a fucked up sense, but ripped my heart out. Because I knew why. I knew that J had worn him down like he had me... I knew that his soul was hurting as bad as mine was, if not worse. The abuse he was enduring was coming from the hand of his own father.
I panicked, I cried, I begged him. I sat in his room, trying to talk him out of these feelings, but nothing I said was working. So I did what I thought was the best thing, and got my Mom and Auntie K. I knew going to J with this wouldn't be a good idea. I pulled them both into my room and told them everything Johnny had just told me. They both looked as sad as I felt, and went out into the living room to tell J. I heard them call Johnny downstairs shortly after and start talking to him. I felt horrible, like I had betrayed his trust, but I didn't want anything happening to him. I prayed he wouldn't be upset with me.
I pressed my ear to the door and listened. Johnny was a bit defensive, and J was pissed, dismissive, asking "what the fuck do you have to be depressed about". The conversation wasn't going well. At all. But they decided that come Monday, they would be calling to get him help. J was still adamant that he "didn't fucking need help" and that he was "fine".
At this point, I'm not sure if he received the help he needed. A lot after this is blurry for me. However, Johnny did start self medicating.
Johnny drank so much one night when my Mom had brought Austin and I school shopping that we had to take him to the emergency room. I remember on the car ride there with my Mom and Johnny, he laid his head on my lap so I could play with his hair and he was just mumbling about how much he loved me, how I was the best, and then asked me if I could give him a haircut before school started (Johnny always had me cut his hair at home because I knew exactly the way he wanted it). Upon getting home, J laughed at Johnny from the couch, calling him a lightweight, with no concern for what he had just done.
Johnny started hanging out with new people at school and smoking weed. Totally normal. Everyone smokes weed as a teenager, and it wasn't an issue necessarily for him... until he began taking excessive amounts of Benadryl with it. Johnny bought an industrial sized bag of Benadryl off of Amazon for $15. He began taking 10-15 every morning, and then upon getting to school, smoking weed with his friends.
For those that don't know what happens when you mix excess amounts of Benadryl and THC -- its like a cheap way to trip balls.
I remember the day it happened. My Mom received a call from Norwich Tech that Johnny was high at school, had climbed onto a ladder in shop class, was standing on the top of it trying to reach for a key that wasn't there. His pupils were huge, he was clearly under the influence, and the school called DCF.
DCF came to our house that night. I remember the man sitting across the table from us kids while my Mom and J were in the living room away from us. However, the way our house was set up, the table we were sitting at was 20 feet from the couch in the living room, so we weren't truly given privacy. J turned the TV off, and sat there. He could hear everything we were saying. The DCF case worker was asking us if we were safe, if they hurt us in any way, if we were fed, taken care of.
All 3 of us lied and said we were fine. That everything in the house was perfect.
The tension between J and Johnny continued to grow in the coming months, arguments getting more frequent. We were berated everyday, but Johnny began getting the worst of it.
I feel the need to clarify -- from 13 to 18 when I left, we were verbally abused or afraid every single day. All 3 of us were in a constant state of fight or flight when J was home.
One night, he came downstairs and told his Dad and my Mom that he wanted to go back to Florida and live with his Mom. She was on the phone with him and ready to take him back.
I was heartbroken. But happy for him. He was getting out.
A few weeks later, he was back in Florida.
We know this isn't where the story ends. We know what comes next. But for a brief time, he was out. And he was safe for a little bit, free from our abuser. And sometimes I like to imagine he's just still there, living his life and not gone.
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